


Swallowed in the Sea

by Farasha



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4720931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Farasha/pseuds/Farasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"There are no legacies in this life, are there? Just the water. She pays us, and then she claims us. Swallows us whole." - Hal Gates (Black Sails)</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>After <i>Treasure Island.</i> Two possible endings for John Silver and James Flint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [В морской пучине](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8322874) by [rose_rose (Escargot)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escargot/pseuds/rose_rose)



> Inspired by this anonymous Tumblr prompt: "Hi, um, I was wondering if, once you've finished your current projects, or just as a short thing if you've got the time, you might be interested in writing something about Silver during Treasure Island based on that one post positing that their relationship didn't actually end badly?"
> 
> Part One: "Canon" ending post- _Treasure Island_. Flint passed, but not as it was said in the book. Silver regrets.
> 
> Part Two: Alternate Universe post- _Treasure Island_. Silver comes home to where Flint is waiting for him.

Years of searching, too many old friends at the other end of his sword, and a good deal more time spent courting the noose than John would ever be comfortable with, and this is what came of it. He could have laughed, staring down into the empty hole where the gold presumably _had_ been at some point, except he was afraid that if he did he wouldn't be able to stop. And the lump building into a knot at the back of his throat told him descending into hysterics would come with tears, and he couldn't have that. His crew was more than ready to string him up already.

The boy Hawkins was clever enough to see what was coming and edged closer to John's side - John let him, even though regret for pulling him into this mess in the first place curdled sour in the pit of his stomach. He should have let the boy run. He should have knocked him over the head and stolen the map when they were still ashore all those weeks ago in England - tossed the boy back onto the dock where he belonged, and not led him into this bloody business.

He'd been too blinded by the prospect of finally laying hands on the last piece of James that was his to have. The temptation to blame Billy fucking Bones was there - none of this would have happened if he'd relinquished the map to John like he was supposed to. Billy, who had once been so beholden to his honor and the pirate's code. It hadn't been like him to violate matelotage law that way, but then, Billy never had liked him much.

All the crew's wild talk about the way James passed still had threads of fury thrumming through his veins. That kind of slander belonged in a tavern, out of earshot of anyone who had sailed under the man, and _especially_ out of earshot of his damned husband.

John shook himself out of his wool-gathering. This was like to get ugly very quickly, and he didn't need to be dwelling on thoughts of James. "Jim." He pressed his spare pistol into the boy's hand, not daring to pull his eyes away from the crew, still frantically digging in the sand. "Take that, and stand by for trouble."

Hawkins, bless his clever soul, fixed John with a piercing look. "So you've changed sides again," the boy whispered back.

The corner of John's mouth twitched, struck as he was by the urge to huff a laugh at Jim's naive notion that there was any such thing as a side. The only side John had ever been on was his own. If Hawkins survived this and made a sailor of himself, he'd figure that out for himself someday.

Merry had found something - his cry of outrage was evidence enough of that. John shifted his weight, straightening from where he'd been leaning on his crutch.

"Two guineas!" Merry was brandishing the gold coins in question like they had personally offended him. "That's your seven hundred thousand pounds, is it? You're the man for bargains, ain't you? You're him that never bungled nothing, you wooden-headed lubber!"

A cool thought filtered through the seething anger in John's chest. _I'll shoot him first._

It happened too rapidly, after that - in his sixties, and John still couldn't resist mouthing off and provoking those he likely shouldn't provoke. He did not, in fact, get to shoot Merry first - but he did get to shoot him last, staring down into the man's face and emptying both barrels of his pistol with his teeth clenched in a furious grimace.

John couldn't blame Billy, when all was said and done. He should have been there when James passed, and he wasn't. Losing the last piece of James now was a fitting punishment. John hadn't been able to bear the sight of him, old and frail and barely able to get around the house in his last days. John heard him calling for the Hamiltons one night - first Thomas, then Miranda - and couldn't stand watching him slip away any longer. The letter he received some months later said that he'd called for John, too, and John hadn't been there. It would be fitting to have him reap what he had sown, now. God knew that the years since had been lonely and hard, and not in the same way as they'd been when he was young and still whole of body. 

Limping along behind the doctor and Jim Hawkins and Ben bloody Gunn the halfwit, John let the last of his fury about all of it - James' passing, the map, Billy's last betrayal, the dogs on his crew that tried to mutiny against him twice - drain away, leaving only a hollow sense of loss behind.

Of course Ben had found the treasure. Of course the doctor handed over the map with full knowledge that John would find an empty pit and likely be shot for his troubles - and of course, when John finally laid eyes on the gold at long last, not a single coin of it lay to his name, even if it was his by all rights.

He leaned wearily against the cave wall, closing his eyes against the mist that threatened to gather in them. This treasure was the last piece of James he had left, and it was not to be his. It had never been his, despite all his efforts.

 _You win in the end, James,_ he thought. _You said the gold would ruin me - and it has. Five years obsessed with your legacy even while you rest beneath the water. Suppose I'll be joining you soon, and you can tell me you said as much._

He knew that the phantom scent of salt and spiced rum was all his imagination, but John chose to believe that it was James, unseen and yet constantly present, waiting for him to come home.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> _Oh the streets you're walking on_  
>  _A thousand houses long_  
>  _Well that's where I belong_  
>  _And you belong with me_  
>  _Not swallowed in the sea_  
> 

For a man who disliked the sea as much as John did, it was a wonder how much his body seemed to crave it when it was absent. Each time he returned to land it took him days to adjust to the fact that the ground didn't pitch and roll with the swell of the waves. John kept anticipating a rise in the ground that wasn't there, his crutch landing with a jarring thump that jammed it up into his armpit.

The little grey house stood on the outskirts of town, far from the wide dirt road that was Savannah's main thoroughfare. It had once been white, just as the boards of its porch had once been the sandy brown of birch wood, but the years had weathered it - just as the years had weathered the two men living in it.

John thumped up the steps to the porch with difficulty, puffing for breath. He stopped there, weary eyes fixed on the closed door. He wasn't hesitating, precisely. True, he looked like something a drowned rat had chewed up and spat back out - the very uncomfortable weeks spent in a shore boat with little in the way of provisions had not been kind to his clothes. But he was gone enough in years that those things didn't concern him anymore, not like they would have when he was a young man.

A flash of bright plumage and a sharp whistle caught his attention, and John scowled up at the parrot perched above the doorway. "Can't you ever keep your blasted beak shut? Maybe I wanted a minute more with my thoughts, did you think of that?"

The door creaked open then, and John's chest squeezed at the familiar face - and even more familiar scowl - that appeared there. "You could have all day alone with your thoughts and you still wouldn't know what to say, I'll wager," James said. His voice was rougher than John remembered, and the red was almost fully gone from his hair, though it lingered in the beard that still framed his mouth. His eyes, usually soft like the blue of a calm sea, were icy hard as they took John in. "Been to see your wife yet?"

John didn't blame him for being angry, but that still stung. "I thought I'd come see my husband first. Are you going to let me in the house or are we going to have it out with pistols right here on the porch?"

James grunted, the corner of his mouth twitching in something that might have been a smile if he wasn't so angry. "I just swept the porch this morning. You'd better come in."

John thumped his way inside, kicked the door shut after him, and tossed the burlap bag of gold he'd managed to keep hold of all the way from the Caribbean in the middle of their living room floor. "I found it."

James lifted his eyebrows at the bag. "There was considerably more than this when I buried it."

"That's what's left," John said. "And it's what comes from having to rely on cutthroats with no fucking loyalty."

James made no move to pick up the gold. He passed it by, leaving it to lay in the middle of the floor, forlorn and forgotten. John tensed when he came close and saw sorrow tighten around the corner of his eyes. "I'm not still angry, if that's what you think. Although I suppose you must have found Billy, if you found this."

John's mouth twisted and he looked away toward the far wall. "Billy wasn't himself toward the end," he said. "It was a mercy."

James' breath wound out of him in a long sigh that seemed drawn from the depths of his soul. "Only you and I left, now - well. You, me, and Max, but she keeps to herself. It was twice, perhaps, that she visited while you were gone, and I'm fairly certain it was only to see if I was still breathing."

That made John's throat go dry. He reached out and rested his hand on James' shoulder - cautiously, still unsure of his welcome. The fight had been bad, when he left over the map and the treasure, with James' words ringing in his ears - _I didn't give it to you because it'll ruin you, John. You know that._ It almost had. John had almost become someone he wouldn't be able to look at in the mirror, even after all the long years of everything he'd done to survive. In the end, James had been right.

He shouldn't have worried. James turned into his arms like they'd never been apart, and when their lips met it was like finally coming home. John's crutch clattered to the floor and he clutched at James tightly, letting James steer them both to the nearby sofa, collapsing gratefully on it.

"Never again," John said, his face tucked into the crook of James' neck, words breathed out across the dry, wrinkled skin, still dotted with freckles even after all these years away from the sea. "I'm too old for it, and the next time I go out, I might not come back."

"Here I thought that's why you set this whole business up in the first place," James said. "I would have been content to simply retire, but you had to be dramatic about it - as usual - and spread that fucking nonsense about me being dead."

"Pardon me for not wanting every treasure-seeker from here to fucking Africa pounding down our door looking for that." John jerked his thumb at the gold. "What do you want to do with it?"

James shrugged. His hands fell to the stump of John's left leg, digging his fingers into the muscle just before its end, and John tipped his head back against the back of the sofa with a long groan, feeling the phantom stabbing of pins and needles in his missing leg subside as it always did when James did this. He'd missed the feeling of James' touch. He'd missed this house, the smell of sweet blooms in the summertime and full bloom of the heavy sun even in the dead of winter. He never should have left, and he said as much.

"I could have told you," James said. "But you never were one for listening to me when you got an idea in your head. Couldn't stop you when we were young, and I'm definitely too old to be stopping you now."

"The gold?" John pressed, though his eyes had slipped closed and he was more than content to stay here, pressed against James' side.

"Give it to your wife," James said. "Max will have far more use for it than either one of us. She can put it into the store."

John hummed his agreement. It was a fitting end for it - for all of it. John was more than willing to lay it all to rest and bid the sea farewell - at least until it was time for them to both slip beneath its waves for good. James would always have half his heart in the sea, and when the time came, would rather let it claim him than the earth. John understood. He would be there, when that time came, and he would go that way too when it came for him.

And in the time between, they had each other, their home, a foul-mouthed parrot and a sharp-tongued former madam. Their family, such as it was, and John wondered why he had ever thought it wasn't enough.

"I'm a fool," he said. "I'm glad I lived long enough to come home and tell you what a fool I am."

James chuckled against his hair. "I'm glad you did at that. It's good to have you home, John."


End file.
